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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two

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Speaker 3: in our series on the theme of being upside down.

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Speaker 3: In the last episode, we started off talking about a

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Speaker 3: very strange and interesting scene in the Divine Comedy of Dante,

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Speaker 3: in which Dante the pilgrim and Virgil his guide are

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Speaker 3: in Hell and they are at the very bottom of Hell.

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Speaker 3: They are crawling down the wooly haunch of Satan, so

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Speaker 3: they're on Satan's body and the world suddenly appears to

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Speaker 3: turn upside down. We talked about what that scene meant

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Speaker 3: within Dante's medieval worldview and how subsequent changes in our

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Speaker 3: understanding of physics and cosmology affect how that scene reads.

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Speaker 3: After that, we started looking at the principle of upside

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Speaker 3: downness in mammal biology, focusing first on bats, very very

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Speaker 3: upside down creatures in multiple ways, and then on tree sloths,

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Speaker 3: and we got into all kinds of questions like why

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Speaker 3: these animals are adapted to hang upside down, how their

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Speaker 3: bodies managed this, especially since it's something that becomes incredibly

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Speaker 3: uncomfortable for us after a few minutes or less. And

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Speaker 3: we're back today to talk about more.

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Speaker 2: That's right. And in the last episode about where we

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Speaker 2: had ended things, we had been talking about upside down

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Speaker 2: sloths or sloths, and we were talking about bats, and

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Speaker 2: we teased out the idea of talking a little bit

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Speaker 2: about vampires, and you know, especially talking about vampire bats,

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Speaker 2: like moving this underside of a branch in order to

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Speaker 2: get at some birds. You know, I couldn't help but

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Speaker 2: think about vampires and think about Dracula, and it actually

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Speaker 2: called to mind an excellent passage from the novel Dracula

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Speaker 2: by Bromstoker. I'm going to read it from it here.

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Speaker 2: What I saw was the count's head coming out from

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Speaker 2: the window. I did not see the face, but I

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Speaker 2: knew the man by the neck and the movement of

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Speaker 2: his back and arms. In any case, I could not

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Speaker 2: mistake the hands, which I had had so many opportunities

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Speaker 2: of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused,

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Speaker 2: for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest

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Speaker 2: and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But

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Speaker 2: my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I

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Speaker 2: saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and

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Speaker 2: began to crawl down the castle wall, over that dreadful abyss,

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Speaker 2: face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like

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Speaker 2: great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes.

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Speaker 2: I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some

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Speaker 2: weird effect of shadow. But I kept looking, and it

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Speaker 2: could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes

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Speaker 2: grasp the corners of the stone, worn clear of the

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Speaker 2: moor or by the stress of years, and by thus

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Speaker 2: using every projection and inequality, moved downwards with considerable speed,

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Speaker 2: just as a lizard moves along a wall.

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Speaker 3: It's funny because this scene from the book is pretty

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Speaker 3: faithfully reproduced. I think in the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula movie,

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Speaker 3: there's a scene where they show Gary Oldman in his

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Speaker 3: he's still in the Old Man Dracula form with the

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Speaker 3: butt hair, so he's got the butt hair, but he's

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Speaker 3: crawling down, face down, down the wall of the castle,

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Speaker 3: and I think they use some sped up film to

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Speaker 3: like show him scuttling really quick like a lizard, and

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Speaker 3: it's almost funny looking, But that is what the what

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Speaker 3: the novel, says.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that scene in the in the movie.

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Speaker 2: And and so we see this reference visually a lot

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Speaker 2: in various vamphire films and other sci fi and horror films.

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Speaker 2: And I was trying to think of a few examples.

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Speaker 2: Really one of the first ones that this didn't quite

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Speaker 2: come to mind, but it came up when I was

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Speaker 2: looking around. There is a scene in John Carpenter's Vampires.

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Speaker 2: You know, as we discussed, not the top tier Carpenter,

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Speaker 2: but still, as it is the case with any John

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Speaker 2: Carpenter film, some interesting moments, And there is a moment

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Speaker 2: where we have the big bad vampire of that picture

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Speaker 2: kind of positioned in a cruciform pose on the ceiling

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Speaker 2: behind one of the characters.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, almost looks like laying down drunken on the floor,

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Speaker 3: but on the ceiling right now.

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Speaker 2: In films that we've watched for Weird House Cinema, our

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Speaker 2: Friday episodes of the show when we just talk about

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Speaker 2: a weird movie, we did recently watch The Boxer's Omen

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Speaker 2: in which we have a warlock character who is who

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Speaker 2: has a close affiliation with bats and other creatures, and

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Speaker 2: he climbs on the ceiling and crawls across the ceiling

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Speaker 2: in order to what drop a spider down onto a

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Speaker 2: rival Buddhist sorcerer.

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Speaker 3: I believe, yes, he has a there's a there's a

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Speaker 3: good sorcerer and an evil sorcerer, and the evil one

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Speaker 3: attacks the good one by i think, dropping spiders on

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Speaker 3: his face that stab his eyes with him.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, and blind him. But yeah. Various movies love

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Speaker 2: to throw their monsters up onto the ceiling. There is,

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Speaker 2: of course, a pretty amazing and famous sequence in John

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Speaker 2: Carpenter is the thing in which one of the you know,

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Speaker 2: the entity, the entity is pretending to be one of

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Speaker 2: the humans, and it ends up like flying up onto

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Speaker 2: the ceiling and begins to you know, bubble and transmute

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Speaker 2: into a different form.

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Speaker 3: I wonder by what mechanism is the thing sticking to

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Speaker 3: the ceiling, because it's supposed to be human anatomy at.

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Speaker 2: That point, Yeah, I'm not sure I really need to

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Speaker 2: sit down and rewatch it. But I there's a lot

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Speaker 2: of crazy stuff happening in that sequence, so it almost

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Speaker 2: feels feels sensible that the impossible is happening. So vampires

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Speaker 2: are of course closely associated with dats in many traditions,

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Speaker 2: especially modern tradition. But I have another bat related creature

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Speaker 2: to bring up here, and it is the Alan of

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Speaker 2: the Philippines. This is spelled just like Alan, but it

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Speaker 2: is the name of a particular creature in Filipino tradition.

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Speaker 2: And I first read about this creature in the work

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Speaker 2: of folk lore's Carol Rose, who I frequently saw it.

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Speaker 2: She has a couple of tremendous volumes that have a

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Speaker 2: lot of creatures chronicled from around the world, and Rose

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Speaker 2: describes them as a is, this being a group of

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Speaker 2: creatures in the folklore of the Tengean people, also I

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Speaker 2: think referred to as the Itnig of the Philippines, and

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Speaker 2: she describes them as bird like people with fingers and

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Speaker 2: toes that point backwards, which enable them to hang upside

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Speaker 2: down from the topmost branches of trees. So we get

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Speaker 2: inverted and backwards with this creature, and clearly, despite being

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Speaker 2: described in Avian terms, their basic description brings to mind

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Speaker 2: the various fruit bats of the world, and a number

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Speaker 2: of them are found in the Philippines, including the giant

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Speaker 2: golden crowned flying fox. They roost in the trees, but

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Speaker 2: the al roosts in the trees, but also have houses

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Speaker 2: of pure gold on the ground. Were told and different

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Speaker 2: tales position them as you know, everything from tricksters to

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Speaker 2: benevolent helpers. So I was looking for more information about

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Speaker 2: these creatures, and I found I ran across the excellent website,

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Speaker 2: the Aswang Project, which I believe I've encountered before. It's

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Speaker 2: maintained by one Jordan Clark, and he points He points

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Speaker 2: to several other things about these creatures, points out that

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Speaker 2: they're said to adopt lost children, and also that they

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Speaker 2: make new elons out of the sort of pilfer biomaterials

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Speaker 2: associated with female human procreation or the female side of

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Speaker 2: human procreation. So I don't know, they're kind of crafty

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Speaker 2: genetic tinkerers, I imagine in that regard. Clark's breakdown also

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Speaker 2: points at the possibility in some Western retellings that the

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Speaker 2: Alan is confused and combined with other creatures, and points

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Speaker 2: out that there are a finite number of creature types

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Speaker 2: in the Philippines, but with lots of regional variations, which

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Speaker 2: is something I think we find in a lot of

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Speaker 2: folkloric traditions. So reminder that the Philippines consist of more

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Speaker 2: than seven thousand islands and more than one hundred and

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Speaker 2: eighty five ethnic groups. So you might have a certain

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Speaker 2: type of creature that's common in different groups, but you know,

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Speaker 2: individual communities even are going to have a different spin

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Speaker 2: on that creature. Now, turning to the world of Japanese

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Speaker 2: yo kai, who I found not one, but two very

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Speaker 2: interesting ceiling related creatures. So the first is the Tinjo kudari,

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Speaker 2: and this is a yokai whose name translates, I believe

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Speaker 2: roughly to the ceiling hangar. I've also seen it described

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Speaker 2: as the ceiling dropper. So this entity was first reported

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Speaker 2: by noted scholar and yokai chronicler Tori Seki in his

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Speaker 2: illustrated Yokai books of the eighteenth century, and according to

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Speaker 2: Matthew Meyers Yokai dot Com, there's an argument to be

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Speaker 2: made here that Sekian largely created this creature. So it

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Speaker 2: kind of depends on his yokai some of them. Some

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Speaker 2: of them are definitely more folk traditions that he is reporting,

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Speaker 2: some he's maybe putting his own spin on, and some

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Speaker 2: he may be sort of creating whole cloth. So Matthew

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Speaker 2: Meyer writes, quote in Old Japan, the space above the

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Speaker 2: ceiling was connected with lots of superstitions about dead bodies

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Speaker 2: rolling about or women being confined like prisoners. Tinjo Kudari

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Speaker 2: seems to have been something Toriyama invented based on those myths. Fittingly,

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Speaker 2: during this time, the phrase to show someone in the

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Speaker 2: ceiling was a colloquial expression for causing trouble, which Tinjo

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Speaker 2: Kudari certainly does, and he adds the possible connection to

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Speaker 2: another tale, a story of a yokai that was something

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Speaker 2: of an attic monster in an inn, descended down at

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Speaker 2: night to drag travelers up to consume them. And of

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Speaker 2: course that one is more overtly threatening than a lot

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Speaker 2: of yokai. A lot of yokai, as we've discussed in

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Speaker 2: the show before, they're just they're doing their own creepy thing,

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Speaker 2: and just witnessing them is maybe the limit of human interaction.

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Speaker 3: I see, Yeah, they're living parallel lives in a parallel

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Speaker 3: world almost. But yeah, but some are more more predatory.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like some are going to be more aggressive

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Speaker 2: and might hurt you or harm you in some way,

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Speaker 2: and some they're just like, well, you've got to peek

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Speaker 2: into the unseen world there, and I hope you're okay

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Speaker 2: with it. Okay, Now, I did find this whole treatment

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Speaker 2: of the ceiling interesting, and I was reading also about

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Speaker 2: some other tradition, like their ghost stories about for instance,

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Speaker 2: acts of violence that have taken place that have like

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Speaker 2: left blood stains that never go away in ceilings and

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Speaker 2: so forth. You know, there are a lot of ghostly tales

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Speaker 2: like that. And there is another yo kai known as

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Speaker 2: the Tinjonami or the ceiling liquor, and this one is

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Speaker 2: also really fun. So according to Zach Davison at the

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Speaker 2: Hakku Monogatari kaiden Kai website, it visits during cold nights

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Speaker 2: to lick the ceiling, leaving these dark streaks behind on

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Speaker 2: the ceiling, the kind of streaks that say, a child

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Speaker 2: sleeping in a room might they can't go to sleep.

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Speaker 2: They're staring up at the ceiling. Maybe there's light from

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Speaker 2: outside playing on the ceiling and they're noticing these dark

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Speaker 2: streaks for the first time, and then they can reflect

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Speaker 2: on where these came from, allegedly the tongue of the

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Speaker 2: ceiling liquor. So don't stare at the ceiling because you

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Speaker 2: might see the ceiling liquor and if you see the

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Speaker 2: ceiling liquor licking the ceiling, you might die. Otherwise, no

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Speaker 2: real risks involve here. It's not actively trying to hurt you,

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Speaker 2: but it's not something you actually want to see occurring.

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Speaker 3: So the licks on the ceiling are an indicator. They're

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Speaker 3: not gonna mechanistically get you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's it's one of those interesting things. It's like,

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Speaker 2: this may be evidence of a ghost, but you don't

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Speaker 2: want to ever actually see the ghosts. The evidence is

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Speaker 2: all you really need. And so it's kind of a reminder,

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Speaker 2: do not look too closely here lest you see something

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Speaker 2: you can never unsee.

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Speaker 3: Ceiling liquor almost sounds like one of the Mule Lads,

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Speaker 3: doesn't that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Davison also points out that

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Speaker 2: Sekian might be referring to a line of poetry here

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Speaker 2: that reads essentially, in the cold winter, tall ceilings swallow

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Speaker 2: the lantern light. And yeah. So this one was really

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Speaker 2: weird though, to try and figure out, like what are

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Speaker 2: we supposed to make of it? Like what is the

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Speaker 2: intended reader supposed to make of the idea of the

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Speaker 2: ceiling like liquor, And on one level, you potentially just

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Speaker 2: have a scary story that also explains mysterious stains. And

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Speaker 2: we're all familiar from seeing stains like this, you know,

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Speaker 2: often caused by like water dripping and so leaks in

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Speaker 2: the roof and so forth, no matter what the structure

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Speaker 2: of your house might be. But as Michael Dylan Foster

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Speaker 2: points out in twenty fifteen's Licking the Ceiling, semantic staining

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Speaker 2: and Monstrous Diversity, Yochai scholars have also brought up the

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Speaker 2: idea that second is referencing Edo period firefighters or the

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Speaker 2: especially their sort of signature of clothing, some of the

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Speaker 2: frills and the way that the clothing and thrills and

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Speaker 2: fingers of this creature are depicted, and it would be

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Speaker 2: a visual pun that might have been better understood on

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Speaker 2: some level by the intended reader. Okay, So Matthew Meyer

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Speaker 2: mentions this as well, describing the ceiling liquor as essentially

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Speaker 2: a transform matoid. These are like paper flags that were

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Speaker 2: carried by Edo period firemen. You can look up pictures

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Speaker 2: of these. They look like something you would have in

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Speaker 2: a parade, you know, lots of tassels and all. And

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Speaker 2: so the idea is maybe this creature is supposed to

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Speaker 2: be a transformed version of this thing that the firemen

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Speaker 2: would carry. But beyond that, I can't find much about

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Speaker 2: the definite connection here. Is it something concerning fire risks

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Speaker 2: and ceilings? To me at least uncertain because the prime

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Speaker 2: firefighting tool of these firemen would have been the destruction

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Speaker 2: or partial destruction of structures that were either on fire

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Speaker 2: or about to become on fire to keep that fire

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Speaker 2: from spreading. So water pumps were not really used till later,

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Speaker 2: because I was initially thinking, oh, well, maybe firefighters water

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Speaker 2: water damage stains. But I don't think that's the connection

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Speaker 2: here at all. But fascinating the way these things seem

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Speaker 2: to stitch together.

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Speaker 3: It's interesting regarding ghostly implications of perceived stains on the ceiling.

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Speaker 3: This may be a totally idiosyncratic connection that has nothing

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Speaker 3: to do with history. But I do know from at

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Speaker 3: least one example of somebody who has a fairly persistent

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Speaker 3: edge of sleek hallucinations tends to wake up thinking that

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Speaker 3: they see things in the room with a kind of

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Speaker 3: dream intrusion on the physical environment. A very very common

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Speaker 3: manifestation of this is illusory stains on the ceiling and walls.

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Speaker 2: Oh that is fascinating. Yeah, because the other way I

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Speaker 2: was thinking about it is like, even in my own house,

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Speaker 2: there's like one place in the living room where there's

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Speaker 2: a scuff on the ceiling, and I have no idea

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Speaker 2: how it got there, Like how did that happen? And

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Speaker 2: so on one level in our mind we might think,

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Speaker 2: you know, we might be dwelling on this floor ceiling dichotomy.

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Speaker 2: So like, if there's a stain on the floor while

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Speaker 2: it dripped there, it's spilt there, But how does the

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Speaker 2: stain get on the ceiling? What can drip onto the ceiling?

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Speaker 2: What can scuff the ceiling? Nothing's walking around up there.

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Speaker 2: It must be something uncanny, It must be something from

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Speaker 2: some kind of inverted world.

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Speaker 3: I personally know the story behind every scuff on my ceiling.

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Speaker 3: There it's because I tried to move of the acoustic

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Speaker 3: partition wall, and there because I tried to move the

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Speaker 3: wall again.

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Speaker 2: Well, yes, there are the known scuffs, for sure, and

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Speaker 2: the more embarrassing the story behind them, the better we

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Speaker 2: remember them.

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Speaker 3: Most of mine are connected to trying to turn a

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Speaker 3: basement room with a low ceiling into a recording space.

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Speaker 2: Now, as far as supernatural creatures of folklore, and legend.

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Speaker 2: There may be some other good ones out there, So listeners,

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Speaker 2: if you know of other upside down creatures from folklore

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Speaker 2: and mythology, and we haven't covered them here on the

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Speaker 2: show right in because we would love to hear from you.

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Speaker 2: There are, of course various upside down creatures in comic books.

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Speaker 2: For example, in fact, I wasn't familiar with this one,

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Speaker 2: but I ran across something called upside Down Man in

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Speaker 2: DC's Justice League series, and you can look up pictures

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Speaker 2: of this creature. Basically a monstrous enemy from another dimension,

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Speaker 2: but in the visual medium of comics, he's very often

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Speaker 2: depicted in an inverted position.

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Speaker 3: Shaped and walking on his hands, or.

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Speaker 2: Or often kind of in the frames I was looking at,

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Speaker 2: like kind of gigantic and partially outside of the frame,

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Speaker 2: but inverted. So it's like you're not necessarily in like

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Speaker 2: a physical space, but some sort of either an extra

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Speaker 2: dimensional space or sort of like the visual extra dimensional

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Speaker 2: space that you find in certain comic book scenes. Well,

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Speaker 2: we're not supposed to take it as an actual like

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Speaker 2: physical space. It's just representing interaction between two characters, and

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Speaker 2: he is often presented upside down.

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Speaker 3: This is interesting. I didn't fully get into this for

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Speaker 3: this episode, But I was thinking about how often in

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Speaker 3: poetry and literature upside downness is a visual and spatial

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Speaker 3: metaphor just for wrongness or the thing that should not

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Speaker 3: be and is a violation of the order, is something

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Speaker 3: that indicates chaos and disorder or moral decay, you know,

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Speaker 3: thinking about There's a passage in ts Eliot's The Waste Land,

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Speaker 3: which is very The last section of that poem is

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Speaker 3: describing like a journey through the desert, the parched landscape

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Speaker 3: that has a world gone wrong and destroyed, and he

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Speaker 3: talks about coming upon a I think, coming upon a

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Speaker 3: city in the desert where bats with baby faces crawl

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Speaker 3: upside down, and he sees inverted towers in the air

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Speaker 3: hanging upside down. So it seems to be part of

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Speaker 3: the metaphor created there is something I mean, it might

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Speaker 3: also be an indication of the actual scene imagine, because

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Speaker 3: I guess if it's supposed to be in the desert,

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Speaker 3: seeing the upside down towers might be like a mirage

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Speaker 3: or a fata morgana kind of illusion. But I don't

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Speaker 3: know if that's what it's supposed to mean. But I

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Speaker 3: think also all the upside downness, especially the bats with

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Speaker 3: baby faces. Upside down is clearly supposed to indicate something

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Speaker 3: is wrong here. And it's funny because there's nothing especially

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Speaker 3: bad about being upside down, but we take it as

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Speaker 3: a metaphor for wrongness.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I feel like baby's upside down. Baby's on

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Speaker 2: the ceiling. I've seen that before somewhere, like definitely. I

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Speaker 2: guess to a certain extent. In Labyrinth, Toby is towards

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Speaker 2: the end when we have big Esher Room. I guess

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Speaker 2: Toby's on the ceiling at some point if I'm not mistaken.

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Speaker 2: But I feel like there's another film out there where

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Speaker 2: some sort of magic baby or superpowered baby is on

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Speaker 2: the ceiling. Maybe it's maybe it's Jack Jack from the

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Speaker 2: Pixelaro Inredibles, Yeah, Incredibles. Or maybe it's something poltergeisty. I'm

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Speaker 2: not sure, but he's ringing a bell.

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Speaker 3: Maybe we'll come back to that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, let's see.

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Speaker 3: Are you ready to talk about space, Let's do it?

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Speaker 2: Yes?

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Speaker 3: Okay, So, last time we talked about that scene in

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Speaker 3: the Inferno where Dante is only bewildered because again they're

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Speaker 3: crawling down the body of Satan and it seems like

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Speaker 3: out of nowhere. The world has flipped upside down around him,

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Speaker 3: and initially he is without explanation until Virgil gives the explanation,

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Speaker 3: which is that because they have passed through the very

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Speaker 3: center of the Earth, now the directions of up and

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Speaker 3: down have reversed, and so up has become down and

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Speaker 3: vice versa. So Dante is describing this moment of overwhelming

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Speaker 3: confusion at the sudden subjective inversion of up down continuity,

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Speaker 3: and that moment actually brings to mind a similar situation

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Speaker 3: that occurs in reality, and that is a common experience

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Speaker 3: that astronauts report in microgravity. So I want to talk

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Speaker 3: about astronauts something called visual reorientation illusions and something called

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Speaker 3: the spider Man illusion. To introduce this idea, I was

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Speaker 3: reading a June twenty twenty article in the newspaper of

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Speaker 3: the LSU School of Medicine by Leslie Coppo featuring an

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Speaker 3: interview with a NASA astronaut, and I think at the

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Speaker 3: time an LSU professor of medicine. I believe she might

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Speaker 3: be with a different institution now, but a medical doctor

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Speaker 3: and professor of medicine named Serena Onen Chancellor, and she's

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Speaker 3: talking in this interview about her experience as a flight

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Speaker 3: engineer in expeditions fifty six and fifty seven to the

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Speaker 3: International Space Station. These were both in twenty eighteen, and

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Speaker 3: on a Chancellor talks about how one of the biggest

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Speaker 3: challenges of spaceflight and of the especially the early time

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Speaker 3: spent at the space station, is the body's adjustment to microgravity.

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Speaker 3: This is something we've talked about before, but never with

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Speaker 3: this particular angle that I recall. So you know, literally,

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Speaker 3: the space station and its occupants are in free fall.

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Speaker 3: They're in orbit around the Earth. And since the station

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Speaker 3: inhabitants and the station are all falling at the same rate,

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Speaker 3: there is no ground inside the station, and there's no

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Speaker 3: gravitational queue to tell the astronauts which way is up

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Speaker 3: or down. So inside the space station there is no

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Speaker 3: up or down except that which you try to sort

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Speaker 3: of culturally impose. There's not a physically sensed up or

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Speaker 3: down and so on. In Chancellor describes the experience going

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Speaker 3: from launch, through the initial burn and into orbit, saying, quote,

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Speaker 3: after that eight minutes and forty seconds, when the third

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Speaker 3: stage finally cuts off, your brain does not perceive your

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Speaker 3: environment the same as it did back on Earth. I

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Speaker 3: almost felt like everything was that a forty five degree

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Speaker 3: tilt to the left in front of me, and even

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Speaker 3: the control panels and the console console in the soused

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Speaker 3: vehicle itself appear different. That took a couple of hours

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Speaker 3: to resolve. So that's interesting. We can imagine weird sensations

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Speaker 3: of being in microgravity, like you can imagine even if

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Speaker 3: you haven't felt it yourself. You can sort of imagine

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Speaker 3: the feeling of floating, of you know, having this sensation

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Speaker 3: of weightlessness. But there are these other things she's describing,

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Speaker 3: like suddenly it feels like the world is tilted forty

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Speaker 3: five degrees. That's strange and specific, and I thought it's

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Speaker 3: interesting how we don't always appreciate that the weirdness of

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Speaker 3: being in microgravity is not just a body sensations. It's

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Speaker 3: like a new perceptual and even cognitive regime that causes

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Speaker 3: perceptual and cognitive distortions. In other words, when you lose

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Speaker 3: the ground and the normal gravitational cues for up and down,

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Speaker 3: it leads to illusions of the senses and of the mind.

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Speaker 3: One of the illusions she describes is very Dante crawling

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Speaker 3: on Satan. So she says that a lot of assauts

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Speaker 3: report what is called an inversion illusion, so that your

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Speaker 3: sense of up and down does not disappear when you

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Speaker 3: are in microgravity. It persists, or maybe sometimes suddenly comes

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Speaker 3: back very strongly, but inverted, so that no matter what

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Speaker 3: position you're in, you feel suddenly like you are hanging

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Speaker 3: upside down. And apparently the astronauts sometimes called this the

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Speaker 3: Spider Man illusion, I guess especially. I don't know if

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Speaker 3: it predates this, but it makes me think of that

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Speaker 3: scene in the Toby maguire movie where he's hanging upside

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Speaker 3: down with the kiss that's on the poster reserve.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the weird upside down kiss.

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Speaker 3: But I guess the Spider Man hangs upside down a lot. Yeah, yeah, so,

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Speaker 3: yeah called They sometimes call it informally the Spider Man illusion.

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Speaker 3: I think equally you could have called it the vampire

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Speaker 3: bat illusion or the sloth illusion. It's that there isn't

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Speaker 3: necessarily a gravitationally enforced up or down around you, but

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Speaker 3: your brain's still trying to make up and down happen,

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Speaker 3: and suddenly it just decides I'm hanging upside down. I'm

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Speaker 3: hanging upside down, and I don't.

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Speaker 2: Know why interesting. I wonder if this is related. I've

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Speaker 2: heard of similar things with pilots fine planes, and this

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Speaker 2: may be something that's maybe more likely in like high

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Speaker 2: performance flight. But you can have your horizon sort of

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Speaker 2: messed up and you can think up as down and

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Speaker 2: down is up.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, Well maybe we can try to make

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Speaker 3: more sense of that as we go on, because I

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Speaker 3: want to get to a study in a minute. It's

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Speaker 3: very much about how visual information interacts with these feelings

433
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 3: in the body. But on a Chancellor goes on to

434
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 3: describe more common symptoms of space adaptation. So you have

435
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:46,239
Speaker 3: things like nausea, lack of appetite you can imagine, and

436
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 3: then of course the physiological effects of microgravity that we've

437
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 3: talked about before. I think we've been mentioned in the

438
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 3: last episode, like stuffiness in the head and upper body.

439
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 3: And then on Chancellor goes on to say more about

440
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 3: these confusion and illusions related to the lack of a

441
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 3: gravitational up and down. In one sense, you can think

442
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,160
Speaker 3: of this unhitching from gravity as a kind of freedom.

443
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:12,439
Speaker 3: She says, quote, I can do science on any side,

444
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 3: talking about any side of the module. I can do

445
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 3: science on the ceiling I can do science on the walls.

446
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 3: I can be flipped upside down, I can eat upside down.

447
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 3: It doesn't really matter. But that freedom doesn't necessarily feel

448
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 3: like freedom. It can also be very difficult, disorienting and uncomfortable,

449
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 3: especially at first.

450
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also becomes less of a freedom when you

451
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 2: have to figure out how to use the restroom and

452
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 2: things of that nature.

453
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might need some vacuum assistance there.

454
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, because without gravity it can be a little bit

455
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 2: more difficult.

456
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 3: Can't do right. So she says that some of the

457
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 3: astronauts call this early period of adjustment the first reprogramming phase.

458
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 3: But over time the brain is able to adapt. She says,

459
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:58,480
Speaker 3: in her experience, the first one to two weeks there

460
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 3: tends to be a lot of disorder related to the

461
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 3: brain trying to insist that the head is up and

462
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 3: the feed are down, but then getting this conflicting sensory data.

463
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:13,080
Speaker 3: And then usually after three to four weeks, she says,

464
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 3: the brain adjusts and becomes somewhat more comfortable with this

465
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 3: upless and downless world. And she says, at that point

466
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 3: you can kind of move around with less concern for

467
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 3: up and down where your feed are pointed where your

468
00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 3: head is that sort of thing, and the brain, she says,

469
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 3: adapts beautifully. So it's interesting to consider both things here

470
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 3: that in one sense, our brains are kind of stubborn

471
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:40,679
Speaker 3: and they're trying, and the brain is trying to insist

472
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 3: on like vertical orientation. I'll talk more about that in

473
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:46,040
Speaker 3: a paper. I want to mention in just a minute,

474
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 3: trying to insist on vertical orientation even in a context

475
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 3: where it doesn't make sense. On the other hand, give

476
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 3: it time. And the brain is highly adaptable in a way.

477
00:27:56,880 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of our whole lives, isn't it.

478
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 3: You know, the constant tension between the rigidity and the

479
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:04,680
Speaker 3: adaptability of our brains.

480
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it really is. And I don't know if

481
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 2: we'll get into it in this episode or in the next,

482
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 2: but yeah, there are other examples of how our brain

483
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 2: just sort of makes makes the best it can out

484
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 2: of the sensory data that it is provided with. In

485
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 2: the sensory data may concern what's up and what's down,

486
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 2: and the brain is like, all right, we're gonna work

487
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 2: with it. We're gonna make it work for us.

488
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 3: So I was reading more about inversion illusions and related

489
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,960
Speaker 3: phenomena among astronauts. In a two thousand and three paper

490
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 3: that was based on research carried out on the NASA

491
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 3: Neurolab space lab mission. The paper was called the Role

492
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 3: of Visual Cues in Microgravity Spatial Orientation. Neurolab was a

493
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 3: sixteen day space shuttle mission carried out in nineteen ninety

494
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 3: eight specifically to study the neuroscience of spaceflight, particularly how

495
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 3: like various brain functions are affected by microgravity. The authors

496
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 3: of this paper are Charles Ohmann, Ian Howard Theodore Smith,

497
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:13,959
Speaker 3: Andrew Beal, Alan Natopoff, James Zacker, and Heather Jenkin. And

498
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 3: so the authors of this paper start off by talking

499
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 3: about the physiology of how we normally sense up and down.

500
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:24,600
Speaker 3: Of course, some cues are visual, some are tactle, but

501
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:29,479
Speaker 3: under normal circumstances, a big part of how your body

502
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 3: senses constructs a sense of up and down. Really, because

503
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:37,200
Speaker 3: again there is no in the universe objective thing, no

504
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:40,240
Speaker 3: such objective thing as up and down. But you know

505
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 3: it is a subjective feeling created by our relationship to

506
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 3: the nearest largest gravitational attractor that our brains construct this

507
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 3: idea of up and down with the help of dedicated

508
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 3: acceleration sensing organs in the inner ears called odoliths. These

509
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 3: are little tiny crystals stones made of calcium carbonate, which

510
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 3: is the same material that makes limestone, cave formations and

511
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 3: clam shells. So you've got little kind of you know,

512
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 3: stalactites or stalagmites or clamshell type crystals.

513
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 2: It's like a little biopunk level, right.

514
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think actually it might be a slightly

515
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 3: different crystal arrangement, but it's calcium carbonate of one form

516
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:27,720
Speaker 3: or another. These the odorliths are made of and they're

517
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 3: suspended in the inner ear in a kind of gel

518
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 3: or a kind of fluid gel, and they interact with

519
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 3: these tiny hairs in the inner ear so that they

520
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 3: are able to sense changes in the speed and orientation

521
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 3: of the body. So we use these organs to feel

522
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 3: the sensations of movement, of linear acceleration, of gravity, of

523
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 3: orientation and balance. And there's an interesting fact about physics

524
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 3: that is actually indirectly discoverable through studying our inner ear function.

525
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 3: That fact is that gravity is locally indistinguishable from acceleration.

526
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 3: This is not exactly true on a large enough scale

527
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 3: because on a large scale you get interesting things like

528
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 3: gravity exerting tidal forces on the scale of a human body.

529
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 3: With a gravitational attractor the size of planet Earth, you're

530
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 3: not really going to have something like that. So gravity

531
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 3: is indistinguishable from acceleration. A person standing on the ground

532
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 3: feeling Earth's gravity of nine point eight meters per second

533
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 3: squared feels almost exactly the same force as somebody standing

534
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 3: head up in a rocket ship that is accelerating at

535
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:45,959
Speaker 3: nine point eight meters per second squared. To that person,

536
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 3: the forces are basically the same, and that's why the

537
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 3: organs that we use to feel the pull of gravity

538
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 3: and orient our bodies with respect to up and down

539
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 3: are the same organs we use to feel the sensation

540
00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 3: of linear acceleration because locally they are the same thing.

541
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:06,720
Speaker 3: So on Earth at regular altitude, gravity is experienced as

542
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 3: this constant acceleration toward the ground.

543
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 2: And as we've discussed on the show before, that's why

544
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 2: some of these artificial gravity proposals would seem to be functional,

545
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 2: like artificial gravity via propulsion in a space ship, where

546
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 2: you have a spaceship that's like a skyscraper and you

547
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 2: feel as if you have gravitational force on each of

548
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 2: those floors, or of course the big double tourist situation

549
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 2: like we have in two thousand and one.

550
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, spinning surface if it's big enough.

551
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we discussed in those episodes, you'll find them

552
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 2: in the archive. Yeah, there are a lot of additional

553
00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 2: factors to concern yourself with.

554
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 3: That's right. So acceleration can function as a pretty much

555
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 3: perfect substitute for gravity if you get the you know,

556
00:32:54,720 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 3: if you get all the details right. This is where

557
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 3: things get wild in space. About the space if you

558
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 3: don't have artificial gravity, if you are in freefall like

559
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 3: the astronauts and the ISS are, or if you're in

560
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 3: orbit in a space Shuttle mission. So when astronauts are

561
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 3: in freefall in orbit around the Earth, the authors say

562
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 3: that the odoliths quote float into unusual positions and tilting

563
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 3: the head produces no sustained otolith displacement the way it

564
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,719
Speaker 3: does on Earth. The unusual signals from the otolith organs

565
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 3: and zero G are apparently not sufficient to produce major

566
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 3: changes in the inner ear to eye reflexes that allow

567
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 3: the eyes to stay fixed on an object while the

568
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 3: body is moving. Also, although astronauts typically don't report sensations

569
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 3: of falling. They are susceptible to illusions about body orientation.

570
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 3: So what are these other illusions about body movement and orientation.

571
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 3: The authors talk about one that is the same thing

572
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 3: that On and Chancell are called the spider Man illusion.

573
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 3: The authors here refer to these as inversion illusions, and

574
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 3: they say that a lot of astronauts report these immediately

575
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 3: after reaching orbit from the initial launch. So they'll be

576
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 3: seated in their launch position in the cabin and then

577
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:28,200
Speaker 3: suddenly get the overwhelming sensation that they are actually hanging

578
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 3: upside down from the ceiling. Inversion illusions can happen with

579
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 3: the eyes open or closed, and the illusion most often

580
00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 3: lasts for only a day or two before it starts

581
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 3: to subside. But you can imagine that it could have

582
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 3: major potential to interfere with crew members' ability to stay

583
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 3: focused on the task. So this is a this is

584
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 3: not without consequence. It's not just like a weird little thing.

585
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, you don't want you don't want

586
00:34:57,080 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 3: to be experiencing this if you don't have to.

587
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:02,279
Speaker 2: Right, Generally, there is a lot to do on a

588
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:06,760
Speaker 2: mission like this, and it's you know, it's an extreme environment,

589
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 2: you need to be on your toes and ready to

590
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:10,280
Speaker 2: jump in and work on things. And so the idea

591
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:13,359
Speaker 2: of being disoriented for an extended period of time right

592
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 2: at the top, that doesn't sound like a positive prospect.

593
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 3: There's another type of illusion the authors talk about called

594
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 3: visual reorientation illusions or VRIS. These are illusions that can

595
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 3: happen when someone is in a microgravity environment and they

596
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 3: get visual cues that conflict with their established working sense

597
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 3: of where up and down are. So that established working

598
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 3: sense of up and down is what the authors of

599
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:51,359
Speaker 3: the paper called the astronauts subjective vertical or SV. Now,

600
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,760
Speaker 3: we don't usually need to think about our subjective vertical

601
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 3: because it's going to be pretty you know, for most

602
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 3: people who unless you have some kind of disorder of

603
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 3: the inner ear or something like, you know, something going

604
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 3: on most of the time. For most people, your subjective

605
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 3: vertical is also going to be the same as everybody

606
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:11,919
Speaker 3: else's subjective vertical around you. You know, down is where

607
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:14,400
Speaker 3: your feet are pointed, up is where your head is pointed.

608
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 3: Is pretty straightforward. But the brain maintains a sense of

609
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 3: a subjective vertical even in a microgravity environment. So even

610
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 3: though you no longer feel up and down with your odoliths.

611
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:30,919
Speaker 3: Your brain still insists we got to find up and down,

612
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:34,879
Speaker 3: which way's up, which ways down? And the brain might

613
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:38,240
Speaker 3: decide that this wall of the module is the floor

614
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 3: and the opposite wall is the ceiling. But then imagine,

615
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:44,279
Speaker 3: so you're working on that assumption. You figured out, okay,

616
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 3: here's the floor, here's the ceiling. But then you suddenly

617
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:52,720
Speaker 3: see visual information that conflicts with your brain subjective vertical,

618
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 3: like you see another astronaut floating upside down from your perspective,

619
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 3: or you see a dropped object failing to fall towards

620
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 3: your floor, you know, because gravity isn't there, so it's

621
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 3: not going to fall. And then suddenly the brain says, oh, no,

622
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 3: something is wrong, and you get a visual reorientation illusion

623
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 3: where your subjective vertical instantly flips and the floor becomes

624
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 3: the ceiling and now you are upside down. This is

625
00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 3: described as an unpleasant experience that can trigger attacks of

626
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 3: nausea and motion sickness, especially in the first week or

627
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 3: so of orbital conditions, but the sense of direction problems

628
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 3: can persist for months. The authors say that vris were

629
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 3: first reported by a Russian cosmonaut named German Titov in

630
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty one, and by the nineteen nineties they were

631
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 3: well known to Skylab and Space Lab crews. They were

632
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 3: often known as the downs. So you get them the

633
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 3: downs suddenly, oh my down is up? Now, Uh, don't

634
00:37:55,719 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 3: feel good. So the authors point out that are usually

635
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 3: spontaneous and unwelcome when they happen, but that astronauts have

636
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 3: reported that they can be either triggered or sometimes reversed

637
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 3: by intentional cognitive effort. So you're in microgravity and you

638
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 3: force yourself to think about the floor and the ceiling,

639
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:24,280
Speaker 3: you can sometimes cause your subjective vertical to flip on purpose,

640
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 3: which I wonder exactly. I don't know exactly how that feels,

641
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 3: but I'm imagining it kind of like the magic eye.

642
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you look at just the right stimuli,

643
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 2: or if you bring a Tsliot bat baby with you

644
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:39,320
Speaker 2: on the flight there, you you just stick that sucker

645
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 2: up to what may seem like the ceiling and damn

646
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 2: you're triggered.

647
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. But interesting question here, like since gravity no longer

648
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 3: rains in the orbital environment, so objects you drop an

649
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 3: object and it doesn't fall, you might just expect the

650
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 3: brain to not care about which direction is down, but

651
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 3: reports from astronauts indicate that the usually the brain, especially

652
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:06,280
Speaker 3: at first, still tries to maintain the sense of the vertical.

653
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 3: It's just part of our programming and it's hard to shake.

654
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 4: Yeah.

655
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 2: Again, it is the it is where we evolved as being.

656
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:18,160
Speaker 2: So it makes sense that it's kind of you know,

657
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 2: stitched in, hardwired to our understanding to or even are

658
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:23,359
Speaker 2: like an understanding of what our body is and where

659
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:24,360
Speaker 2: our body is in space.

660
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, the authors point out that experiments on Earth

661
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:36,719
Speaker 3: have demonstrated that people substantially use visual information and not

662
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,720
Speaker 3: just their inner ear organs, to determine which way is down,

663
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 3: and they cite a bunch of examples of this. One

664
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 3: thing they talk about is experiments where scientists build a

665
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 3: slightly tilted room or build a tumbling room where they

666
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 3: can adjust the direction. So you can, you know, imagine

667
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 3: being in a room where the floor and all of

668
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 3: the objects in the room are not quite flat. They

669
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 3: maybe it's tilted a little bit to the side. And

670
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 3: so they put people in environments like this and have

671
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 3: them try to find and point to up and down.

672
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 3: Often the visual information can take over. When asked to

673
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 3: point down, people in a tilted room will point not

674
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 3: toward the gravitational down, but toward the floor of the

675
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 3: tilted room. So in this case, visual information is somewhat

676
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 3: overriding the felt information from the odoliths.

677
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think if anyone out there, if

678
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:36,279
Speaker 2: you've got to any like high end haunted attraction or

679
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:39,439
Speaker 2: some of the various like Museum of Illusions out there,

680
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:43,839
Speaker 2: you'll encounter rooms like this designed to throw off your

681
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 2: perception of up and down, tilted floors, spinning rooms, and

682
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 2: so forth.

683
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, In fact, I've got something about that in

684
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:54,360
Speaker 3: just a minute. But from this, the author's posit that

685
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 3: the subjective vertical is actually established by a combination of cues.

686
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 3: The brain is is consulting an interaction between sensory information,

687
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:08,960
Speaker 3: not just the inner ear, but also visual information and

688
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 3: maybe other things too, And usually this information is in harmony,

689
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 3: so it doesn't cause a problem, but in microgravity it

690
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 3: can be wildly out of wax, so it does cause

691
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,919
Speaker 3: a problem. Another interesting fact, this is just a little

692
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 3: side note, not really relevant to us, but the authors

693
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:30,759
Speaker 3: point out that there are minor gravity sensing capabilities outside

694
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:33,440
Speaker 3: the organs of the inner ear. They cite that the

695
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:38,720
Speaker 3: kidneys and the cardiovascular system have some ability to sense

696
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,919
Speaker 3: gravitational orientation, and they don't go into detail about why

697
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:44,360
Speaker 3: that is. But I wonder if I has to do

698
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 3: with fluid flows the fluid is it's going to be

699
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 3: gravitationally attracted to the ground.

700
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:52,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that seems like the most likely explanation.

701
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if the brain uses visual information to determine

702
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,919
Speaker 3: up and down, what are the main visual cues, Because

703
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:06,120
Speaker 3: there aren't necessarily objective up and down that we can

704
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 3: see with our eyes, you know, it depends actually on

705
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 3: knowing the context of the environment around you. So we

706
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:18,400
Speaker 3: might consult familiar objects, like we expect to see ceiling

707
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,719
Speaker 3: type objects like light fixtures up, and we expect to

708
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 3: see floor type objects like furniture down. We expect to

709
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 3: see writing right side up, We expect to see a

710
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:31,839
Speaker 3: drinking glass with the open end pointed up. That sort

711
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 3: of thing. The other thing is our own bodies. We

712
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 3: have a strong tendency to feel that our feet are

713
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 3: pointed down unless other information overwhelms that. And there's an

714
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 3: interesting section in the intro here about differences in how

715
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 3: the brain handles disagreement between the senses establishing the subjective vertical.

716
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:57,719
Speaker 3: Depending on how big the disagreement is. Quote, if there

717
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:02,320
Speaker 3: are minor directional differences between the gravity receptor and visual

718
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 3: cues to the vertical, the brain apparently compromises, and the

719
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 3: SV the subjective vertical points to an intermediate direction. So

720
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 3: quote the remaining component of gravity is then perceived as

721
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:20,400
Speaker 3: a mysterious force pulling the body to one side. They

722
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 3: say this illusion can be readily experienced in houses tilted

723
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 3: by an earthquake. And this brings us back to what

724
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 3: you were saying rob about, like the haunted house or

725
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 3: the Museum of Illusions type room, the room that's tilted.

726
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:37,919
Speaker 3: I know exactly what they're talking about, this mysterious force.

727
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 3: Something feels wrong. There's some kind of uncanny physics that

728
00:43:42,040 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 3: feels like it's pulling you to the side.

729
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I have felt this.

730
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the quote goes on to say, if

731
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 3: the disparity in direction of the gravity receptor and the

732
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:58,839
Speaker 3: visual verticals is large, one sensory modality or the other

733
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:03,279
Speaker 3: typically captures the subjective vertical. So one just takes over

734
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 3: and says, vertical is mine. Now, they say, quote Tilting

735
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 3: the head away from the gravitationally erect position enhances the

736
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 3: effect of visual cues. There seem to be consistent differences

737
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 3: between individuals in the relative weighing assigned to visual versus

738
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:25,759
Speaker 3: gravity receptor cues. Older individuals appear more susceptible to visually

739
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 3: induced tilt. Scene motion enhances visually induced tilt for most subjects.

740
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:34,400
Speaker 3: So I thought that was really interesting too, about like

741
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:38,320
Speaker 3: these individual differences. I am now very curious about myself,

742
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 3: and I feel like I don't have an easy way

743
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:45,400
Speaker 3: to know. Is my personal subjective vertical more doggedly tied

744
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 3: to the gravity receptors and the inner ear, or is

745
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:51,960
Speaker 3: it more susceptible to visual information? I would like to

746
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 3: know what kind of up and down man?

747
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 2: I am, well, you know, maybe you got to wait

748
00:44:56,440 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 2: till October on this one and find a good uh

749
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:00,160
Speaker 2: hanta detraction of it.

750
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:04,400
Speaker 3: It maybe, But again they do say that visual information

751
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 3: tends to be stronger if you are older. I don't

752
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:09,839
Speaker 3: know if that means visual information is stronger or if

753
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 3: that means the inner ear is weaker. And it also,

754
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 3: visual information tends to be more powerful if you are moving,

755
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:19,800
Speaker 3: or if the scene around you appears to be moving.

756
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: So anyway, the authors of the study, they talk about

757
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:35,399
Speaker 3: some more interesting things in their introduction, but I guess

758
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 3: we should get to their finding. So the mission is

759
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 3: not like a huge sample size. There was sort of

760
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 3: a pilot study of this sort of thing, and this

761
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,080
Speaker 3: has been followed up on with larger studies of astronauts

762
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:50,920
Speaker 3: over time. But this initial test used the four adult

763
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 3: male astronauts of this mission in orbit with a variety

764
00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 3: of experiments, many including virtual reality goggles as a stimulus,

765
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:04,640
Speaker 3: and their major findings were as follows. Again, there were

766
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 3: fairly strong individual differences in how people created their subjective

767
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 3: vertical and these tended to continue during spaceflight, though one

768
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 3: astronaut became more dependent on visual cues to determine up

769
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 3: and down while in microgravity. They say that they found

770
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 3: astronauts in microgravity became a lot more vulnerable to what

771
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:30,279
Speaker 3: they call circular self motion illusions, the illusion that you

772
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 3: are spinning or rolling triggered by visual cues of rolling.

773
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:39,880
Speaker 3: And then they also looked at visual cues associated with

774
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 3: linear movement through a scene. So this was studying quote

775
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,839
Speaker 3: whether a virtual scene moving past the subject produces a

776
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 3: stronger linear self motion illusion. So imagine your stationary in microgravity,

777
00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:00,239
Speaker 3: you put on virtual reality goggles that suggest you are

778
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 3: moving forward linear motion through a scene. Do you feel

779
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 3: in your body like you're actually moving through a scene?

780
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:12,080
Speaker 3: The research found yes, absolutely, in microgravity they experienced this

781
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 3: feeling of gliding like a ghost or like the camera

782
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 3: in Dario Argento's Deep Red gliding through the scene forward.

783
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 3: This feeling of illusory linear motion came on faster, and

784
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,880
Speaker 3: it was stronger when triggered by the virtual reality in

785
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:33,759
Speaker 3: these in the microgravity conditions. The study also found that

786
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:37,839
Speaker 3: these self motion illusions could be somewhat counteracted by having

787
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 3: the astronauts where force springs that press on the body

788
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 3: to simulate gravity. I thought this was interesting. So even

789
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 3: rather crude approximate approximations of gravitational force that I hope

790
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 3: I'm right about this from what I could tell, would

791
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 3: not really be acting on the inner ear organs. It

792
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 3: would be like pressing on maybe the shoulders or the hips,

793
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:01,839
Speaker 3: pressing on the body with springing. That even that kind

794
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:06,240
Speaker 3: of crude approximation, if I'm understanding correctly, could help reduce

795
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:07,640
Speaker 3: self motion illusions.

796
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 2: Interesting.

797
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 3: And finally, the study also found that changing the subjective

798
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 3: vertical This was really interesting to me. Changing which direction

799
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:22,719
Speaker 3: you feel is up or down could cause changes in

800
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 3: how astronauts perceived objects. So not changing how the object looks,

801
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 3: but just changing which way the astronaut feels the ceiling

802
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 3: or the floor is. That could cause astronauts to make

803
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:42,120
Speaker 3: different judgments about whether a curved surface is convex or concave.

804
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 3: This apparently depends on where you subjectively believe the floor is,

805
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 3: but even more interestingly, on object recognition. So sometimes it

806
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 3: could become harder to recognize a familiar object that you're

807
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 3: used to seeing if you have inverted your sense of

808
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 3: where the floor is. You can imagine again in space

809
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 3: that being able to recognize familiar objects is actually quite important,

810
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 3: especially if you are manning controls or trying to do

811
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 3: any kind of mechanical task or you know, scientific pass Yeah,

812
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 3: so like suddenly recognizing things in your environment. Again, nothing

813
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:24,040
Speaker 3: that you are physically looking at has changed, but your

814
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 3: brain flips and now the floor is the ceiling, and

815
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 3: now what the way you recognize things is different the

816
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:35,320
Speaker 3: author's right quote. Overall results show that most astronauts become

817
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:40,319
Speaker 3: more dependent on dynamic visual motion cues, and some become

818
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:45,480
Speaker 3: responsive to stationary orientation cues. The direction of the subjective

819
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:51,280
Speaker 3: vertical is labile in the absence of gravity. So interesting

820
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 3: that so much depends on up and down. Even in

821
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 3: an environment where up and down cease to have any

822
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:04,320
Speaker 3: gravitational relevance. You're not stuck to the floor, objects don't

823
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:07,479
Speaker 3: fall when you drop them, and yet your brain can't

824
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:10,480
Speaker 3: let up and down go. It still relies on the

825
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:15,280
Speaker 3: sense of up and down to recognize things in its environment,

826
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:19,800
Speaker 3: to interpret visual cues like object shading, to interpret which

827
00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:22,719
Speaker 3: way a surface is curved. That depends on where you

828
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:26,399
Speaker 3: think the floor is. To interpret do I recognize this

829
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 3: or not? Do I know what this tool is? Depends

830
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 3: on where you think the floor is. And to understand

831
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 3: how the body itself is moving.

832
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating, and you know, it comes back to

833
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 2: something that I thought about before, Like, you know, we

834
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:43,680
Speaker 2: have all of these we've gone over all these different

835
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,279
Speaker 2: ways that the body is thrown for a loop when

836
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:49,640
Speaker 2: it's taken out of a lot of Earth gravity and

837
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:53,800
Speaker 2: placed in a microgravity environment. But at the same time,

838
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 2: it's also kind of alarming in its own way, Like

839
00:50:57,120 --> 00:50:59,400
Speaker 2: we can totally live up there. Granted, we have to

840
00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:02,399
Speaker 2: do things like bring our own portion of the atmosphere

841
00:51:02,440 --> 00:51:06,919
Speaker 2: with us, you know, because up there, our appropriate portion

842
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:10,359
Speaker 2: of the atmosphere is not you know, it's not gravitationally bound.

843
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 2: You know, we have to bring it with us obviously.

844
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 2: But but we can actually go up there if we

845
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 2: take care of the the some of the environmental conditions.

846
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 2: It's it's not like if we were like a Japanese

847
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 2: Kappa yo kai with the little pool of water in

848
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 2: the top of its skull, like if it goes into space,

849
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 2: the water is going to float away and it's vital

850
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 2: escence is gone. Like like all of our systems they

851
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 2: still work. It's not like they won't work without gravity.

852
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:40,359
Speaker 2: And like that in and of itself is kind of interesting, right,

853
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 2: It's like because again we we evolved in this, in

854
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:49,320
Speaker 2: this gravitationally bound existence, and you know, our systems function

855
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 2: in ways that that depend on or play upon those conditions.

856
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then of course the other interesting thing is

857
00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:00,520
Speaker 3: talking about the different way is that these probably can

858
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 3: be overcome. Like one of them, as I mentioned earlier,

859
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:08,520
Speaker 3: is that astronauts have found that sometimes with intentional cognitive

860
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 3: force they can undo a visual reorientation illusion, like they

861
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:17,359
Speaker 3: can flip the floor and ceiling back despite concentrating on it,

862
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 3: not always but sometimes. And then the other thing is

863
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:23,960
Speaker 3: so that's like the short term ability to overcome this weirdness,

864
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 3: and then in the long term you also have just

865
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:29,080
Speaker 3: the adaptability and plasticity of the brain. It was what

866
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 3: on and Chancellor was talking about that at first it

867
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 3: can be pretty bad, but over time your brain does adapt.

868
00:52:35,520 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 3: The brain sort of reprograms itself to feel more comfortable

869
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 3: and natural in this environment. And eventually, I don't I

870
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:47,200
Speaker 3: actually don't know the answer to whether these types of

871
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:51,760
Speaker 3: illusions and problems ever completely stop, but there certainly become

872
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:55,239
Speaker 3: less problematic and persistent over time, and maybe at some

873
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:56,839
Speaker 3: point stop completely. I don't know.

874
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, our brains just have this amazing ability, this neuroplastic

875
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 2: ability to take whatever is available and make the best

876
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 2: out of it, to stitch together an understanding of body

877
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:14,760
Speaker 2: and time and space and place out of whatever is available.

878
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,640
Speaker 2: You know, mcguiver's in existence for you, or it's like

879
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:20,359
Speaker 2: one of those shows where it's like, okay, chef, these

880
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 2: are the ingredients you have to cook dinner with and

881
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 2: the brain's like, Okay, yeah, I can work with that.

882
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:26,680
Speaker 2: It would be great if I had garlic. I don't

883
00:53:26,719 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 2: have garlic, I'll find a way you can live without it.

884
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:31,240
Speaker 3: That's one of the worst things to be without.

885
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully you have you know, some shallots around or

886
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:39,319
Speaker 2: some green onions. But yeah, but if the recipe calls

887
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 2: for garlic, what are you gonna do? Maybe garlic is

888
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 2: like gravity in that respect, I don't know. All Right, Well,

889
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 2: we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode of

890
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:49,359
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, but we have a lot

891
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:51,360
Speaker 2: more to discuss about the upside Down. We're going to

892
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 2: get into some more areas of this that are tied

893
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 2: in their own way to gravitation. We're going to get

894
00:53:57,239 --> 00:53:59,839
Speaker 2: into optics a bit more, and who knows what else

895
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 2: we will summon out of the upside down. So we

896
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:06,680
Speaker 2: hope that you'll join us for that one. In the meantime,

897
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:08,839
Speaker 2: we'll just remind everyone out there. The Stuff to Blow

898
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with

899
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We

900
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:16,160
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a

901
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:18,960
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird house cinema, So you know that

902
00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 2: helps you make sense of whatever you happen to see

903
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 2: in the stuff to blow your mind. Feed be it

904
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 2: the audio feed wherever you get your audio podcasts, and

905
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 2: we have archives going about years there, or if you're

906
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 2: catching us on Netflix in an audio video format, which

907
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,359
Speaker 2: is relatively new for us, wherever you happen to get

908
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,360
Speaker 2: the show wherever you're listening and or viewing right now,

909
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,360
Speaker 2: we just asked that, hey, pull whatever triggers are available

910
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:48,320
Speaker 2: to you in terms of subscribing or liking, adding stars

911
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 2: or thumbs, just make sure that you know which way

912
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:55,759
Speaker 2: is the thumbs need to go up. Yeah, so if

913
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:59,560
Speaker 2: your sense of up and down is momentarily distressed by microgravity,

914
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:01,919
Speaker 2: let a level out a bit before you rate the show.

915
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 3: You just mentioned that we were venturing into the audio

916
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 3: visual format. You know, so we've done audio for so long.

917
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 3: Now we've got audio visual as well. I think the

918
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:15,320
Speaker 3: next step has got to be our podcast a silent film.

919
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,840
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, yeah.

920
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:22,320
Speaker 3: Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

921
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:24,799
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

922
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:27,520
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest

923
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.

924
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

925
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:40,240
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

926
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

927
00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:46,399
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

928
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

929
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:02,360
Speaker 2: Wrist watt ter